Throughout my life, I sought out and read many different kinds of spiritual books in hopes that they would guide me to greater peace, less anxiety and a sense of fulfillment.  I am grateful to the many authors such as Eckhart Tolle, Michael Singer, Pema Chodron, Lama Surya Das, and Thich Nhat Han who helped guide me in the right direction--the realization that the answers to my struggles were within.However, for many years, what I read had only a conceptual impact on me. In other words, I understood what the author was writing about but I did not directly experience their message.  One book that really intrigued me was a book a friend sent me whose title held great promise; When fear Falls Awayby Jan Frazier.

I read the book hungrily to find the author’s secret potion that rid her of fear. It seemed to me at the time that she had made a request to the universe for her fear to disappear and somehow it did.  I thought I missed something when I read the book because it seemed so easy for her fear to fall away and yet I was struggling so hard and my fear was not budging. It was like crazy glue stuck on me with no antidote to remove it.

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I didn’t use to notice how often I said “should” about my own actions or the actions of others. I frequently commented on what they really should be doing!!! The unfortunate thing about should was that it acted like a commander in my head, constantly judging my actions and the actions of those around me. This word should was more than an opinion because there was emotion that came with NOT doing what I should do.  If I or others didn’t adhere to the should directive then I felt disappointment, regret, irritation, shame or frustration. 

 A few years back, I began to pay attention to how often I would say should. All the judging  shoulds in my head had become so painful that I began to stop blaming the outside world and started looking for the culprit within. I noticed that I said and thought should hundreds of times a day. It was like the plague and I had a bad case of it.  Everywhere I went should would accompany me. 

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I grew up in an environment where I felt unseen.  It appeared to me that what I did as a child did not seem to merit recognition, attention, praise or love from my parents and those around me. This is not about blame.  My parents were very young when they got married and by the time they were 25 they had three children under the age of 4. They were divorced by the time they were 30.  I believe that my parents suffered from neglect as well and were struggling to deal with their own feelings of unworthiness. 

However, their deficits took a toll on the three children who could not understand their behavior. At the time, I didn’t understand I was experiencing emotional neglect nor did I understand that I began to develop coping mechanisms deal with these feelings of inadequacy.  

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Every summer my husband’s family from Texas comes and visits us for a few weeks. Several years ago, my niece who was then in her mid twenties  was bringing her 10 month old baby on the family trip.  

That summer, I was already a roiling pot of emotions. It seemed that a brew of events out of my control were bubbling over. As a result, I was feeling quite dysregulated.  Just a few of the issues that seemed to be causing the the inner  turmoil were that my middle daughter was going off to college for the first time, I was going to be turning 50 years old and one of my close friends had recently separated from her husband of 20 years.  That entire year I seemed to be pricked and agitated by the subtlest of things.

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Although I was following a Buddhist philosophy, I figured that since I wasn’t from a Buddhist culture and  I was not participating in a Buddhist lineage like Theravadan, Mahayana or Tibetan, I wasn’t going to get enlightened this life time.  I was ok with this notion because I was benefitting and getting some relief from the practices I had been implementing such as Tonglen and meditation.

I began to understand that a great deal of my stress and anxiety had to do with my thoughts.  The challenge was that getting rid of them or changing them seemed impossible.  What I could do though was to begin to notice when the downward spiral would begin. I would think that what was happening should be different than what was actually happening or I feared that what was going to happen was not going to be the way that I wanted it to be. 

 

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When I turned 40, my family and I took a trip to Italy for a vacation.  We took our three children who were 13, 9 and 5 at the time, my husband’s sister and her two children and my husband’s parents. Although I was no longer working at my job, I was a full time mother and had filled my life with many other expectations and attachments that made life feel almost as fast and as chaotic as when I worked.  So, this trip was a very exciting diversion from my regular life. 

 

We rented a farm house in the countryside surrounded by wine vineyards in Tuscany. Here there were no drop offs or pick ups, no play dates, no soccer games, no schedule and no perceived obligations or expectations. I had studied Italian while in high school and in college so I could communicate fairly well with the local people. This gift allowed me to truly connect with them  weather it was at the grocery store or in a cafe.

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